WINCHESTER – After years photographing disease, famine and war around the world, Dominic Chavez returned home to find himself "drawn to places without people'' where he sought solace in a different kind of landscape.

In his suggestively titled exhibit "U-Turn,'' the award-winning conflict photographer has captured natural drama in black-and-white images of serene and stunning beauty.

At first glance, his "Wrinkles'' from 2012 might be another pretty panorama of a vast range of mountains, rising from a rocky plain up to cloudy skies.

Look again, perhaps as Chavez did, not long after returning from Afghanistan or Eritrea where men fought and died for their faith or fled famine that turned them into scavengers.

Eons of flowing water have worn rutted channels through the rocky slopes. Countless ages of winds have worn the mountainsides smoother than any human machine could.

Don't imagine there's no people in these photos.

First, Chavez is there, waiting with a camera, looking at a field of dying sunflowers or a lightning-blasted tree through the same eyes that artfully composed scenes of gaunt orphans or children mourning in a graveyard.

In his stark and lovely "Self Portrait'' from 2011, a wind-twisted pine thrusts skyward from the barren crest of what might be the rocky coast of Maine.

A visitor wondered where was Chavez in his own self-portrait.

Perhaps, he's the solitary pine, bent but still standing between the stony slope and the mist obscuring the horizon. Or maybe Chavez identifies with the broad breadth of rocky ground, cloudy sky and the gnarled pine that seems to hold them together.

At first, the exhibit's title, "U-Turn,'' seems an obvious signifier of a seasoned photographer who has spent more than a decade in 50 countries documenting the human cost of disease, hunger and conflict especially on women and children and finally returned home to his family.

Introducing the show, Chavez wrote: "As the years passed it became difficult to distance myself from their stories when I returned to the United States. Almost unconsciously, I made a U-turn, I found myself again drawn to places without people as I was when I was a young man."

As visitors follow his photos around the gallery, Griffin Director Paula Tognarelli invites - maybe forces - them to make their own U-turn by placing two piles of Chavez's color images from abroad on a table in the center of the room.

Rejecting a suggestion visitors should wear gloves to protect the photos, she insisted on working prints they could handle to get the feeling of holding these dramatic photos of poverty, disease and death.

"I didn't want a linear exhibit. We wanted to put a separate spin on it,'' she said. "Handling those prints is integral to viscerally understanding Dominic Chavez's own U-turn.''

Page 2 of 2 - Brian Alterio also changes direction dramatically in a companion exhibit in the adjacent Atelier Gallery.

After a 30-year hiatus from photography, he has made a brilliant comeback with "Human Nature,'' a lovely exhibition that juxtaposes black-and-white images of the human figure with flowers and plants that share structural similarities.

A successful photographer in England in the 1970s, Alterio moved to the U.S. in 1979, spending three decades at the forefront of the digital technology movement.

At first, visitors might not notice that a delicate image of a lily's twisted petals is displayed next to a finely-detailed photo of the intertwined fingers of two hands.

Look again at the words in the title – "human'' and "nature'' – and everything pops into focus.

A photo that captures the composed muscular tension of a female nude slightly bending at her waist hangs next to an image of the interwoven roots of a banyan tree.

Describing the show, Tognarelli wrote Alterio's "years spent as a digital scientist coupled with his poetic soul'' helped him create a visual narrative "about beauty in living objects.''

"There is an elegance and grace to how a flower shares a gesture with the human body,'' she said.

It's far more than an artsy gimmick. Fusing botany and physiology, Alterio seems to have captured in images of startling elegance the laws of form infusing organic life.

After his long absence from photography, Alterio wrote he began a series of floral images in 2011 when he "observed the slow magnificent blooming of an amaryllis.''

He has said witnessing a flower's "changes as it declines,'' evokes parallel changes in humans that remind him of "of the inevitability of life, decline and mortality itself.''

While initially drawn to the contrast of the pale petals against an "accidentally dark background,'' he came to find the "coincidences of the human form and lines in space played against the floral images infinitely compelling.''

Viewers will be similarly moved.

Chris Bergeron is a Daily News staff writer. Contact him at cbergeron@wickedlocal.com or 508-626-4448. Follow us on Twitter @WickedLocalArts and on Facebook.